When hosting an intimate dinner party, it’s the small details that count. Delicious food, creating a cozy atmosphere, and personalized touches. We absolutely loved styling this intimate dinner party and here’s how we did it!
Location:
The dinner took place in a private dinning room at Southall Farm & Inn in Tennessee. Since we are based in San Diego, we worked with a handful of vendors remotely to help make this happen who we will mention below.
Theme:
Coming up with a theme helps carry the message from the initial invitation to the farewell gifts. The host put this dinner together to celebrate her daughter’s change in careers after being in the music industry for over a decade. We discussed many potential themes, but the one we settled on is “On A New Note”.
Color Scheme:
When it comes to choosing a color scheme, you want to be sure to match the environment where your event is taking place to keep it all cohesive. The private dining room at Southall has large windows surrounding the room, making you feel immersed in the lush greenery of Franklin, Tennessee with orchards, gardens, greenhouses in the distance.
We wanted to bring the beautiful outdoors inside to the dining table so we chose to use neutrals and greens for our color scheme. See our initial mood board below.
Table Decor:
When choosing table decor, it’s important to consider what you already have. Do you or the venue already have plates, linens or glassware that you can use and build around? Since we were trying to obtain a very specific look, we rented the majority of our table setting from Southern Events Party Rental Company.
For the place settings, we used scalloped wood chargers, green floral china, silverware, green velvet napkins, green water goblets, and crystal wine glasses.
The centerpiece included a long green velvet table runner to match the napkins. There was a mix of large, medium and small flower arrangements along with some single-stemmed vases. We wanted to add some warmth to the table so we included a variety of candles as well - taper candles with glass hurricane sleeves, ribbed votives, and tea light candles. Having different shapes and sizes of flower arrangements and candles gives the centerpiece more dimension and texture, making it more interesting to look at.
You can find similar items for your place settings here:
Florals:
Bailey from Imogen Floral Design was amazing to work with. She understood our vision and executed it flawlessly. When we said we wanted to include white and green flowers she put together a collage of florals she planned to include - White Anemones, White Roses, Scabiosa Stellata, Lomelosia Caucasica, Baby’s Breath, Delphinium, Carnations and a lot of greenery.
Personal Touches:
On of our favorite parts of designing an event are the personal touches that make it that much more special. Here are a couple touches we used to incorporate the theme into the table setting:
Custom menus to match the invitations and included each guest’s name as a place card.
Custom Satin Ribbon tied on each wine glass with “on a new note” handwritten on each one.
Handmade sugar cookies at each place setting for the guests to take home reading “Congratulations Emily” with a hand drawn musical note. Frosted In Franklin did a great job.
Musical Note Napkin Rings. These were another cute and subtle way to tie in the "on a new note" theme.
Setting The Mood:
Now that the table is set and the candles are lit, it's time to set the mood even further with some music. Since music plays such a big role in the theme for this dinner party, live music seemed like the most appropriate choice. There was an acoustic guitarist sitting in the corner of the room playing music as guests arrived and he continued playing throughout the dinner. This was such a nice touch and made the dinner even more intimate.
We hope these few tips help make your next intimate dinner party that much more special.
Cheers!
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